TGS 2014: How Dragon Ball Xenoverse’s Story Changes Everything

The Bandai Namco Dragon Ball Z fighting games have always excelled with their spectacular multiplayer — huge fights, devastating abilities, tons of characters, and other things you’d expect from a great episode of the anime translated brilliantly into the gorgeous games. Dragon Ball Xenoverse’s multiplayer is fine — if a bit too familiar by now — but its single-player story is going to make fans lose their minds.

Xenoverse’s campaign — which received the blessing of Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama — introduces two new villains, Towa and Mira, who are changing the history of the Dragon Ball universe. They manipulate major events from the manga and series in dramatic ways. The scene in which Goku sacrificing himself to kill Raditz, for instance, sees Goku dying, but Raditz dodging Piccolo’s lethal Beam Cannon.

To save history, Trunks summons your custom-created new character to travel through time.

It’s a preposterous setup, even or a game where space men power up to shoot extra-special super lasers and blow up mountains with each others’ bodies. Even still, it’s a good enough excuse to uproot everything fans have known — and frankly been exhausted by, at this point — for 25 years. The idea of Trunks not killing Frieza, or Cell living just a little longer, or the Androids succeeding in their plans, is incredibly appealing to me as a lapsed fan of this franchise. I don’t know if those are actual events in Xenoverse, but the fact that they could be gets me genuinely excited to create my character, and it's something I think a lot of longtime fans are really going to love exploring.

Customization doesn’t sound terribly deep (skin color, clothes, and other simple stuff you'd expect) but Xenoverse's gender and race options are great — my lady Majin (and her hilarious flappy arms) was a ton of fun. Her skills were distinct from the Saiyan or Namekian, and depending on who you decide to take on as your training master, your battles may differ. I fought alongside Goku, and encountered Piccolo training Gohan. Fighting alongside Goku, I clobbered his son and helped him finish off his ex-nemesis. Goku felt useful in the fight — prior to that encounter, he wiped out two enemies in a group of four I didn’t even know were in the battlefield. If I decide, in the middle of the campaign, that I’ve had enough of Goku, though, switching to learn from Vegeta will make Goku jealous.

The combat in those battles was familiar and safe, but I still really enjoy the gorgeous spectacle of blasting a huge, pink laser into the face of a known Dragon Ball hero like Krillin. These games are so fast and kinetic that if you’re not always mobile, your opponent is going to eat you alive. Dashing through the air, teleporting behind your foe, and unleashing crazy combos is the only way to win. It always looks excellent, and remains true to the show’s over-the-top action stylings.

I’m most likely to play Dragon Ball Xenoverse when it launches on PC, even though this is the debut of the series on Xbox One and PlayStation 4. It’ll still come to last-gen machines, of course, with a network test (see: beta) coming ahead of its 2015 release.